


I Will Not Yield

by Dame_Lazarus



Series: To arms! To arms! [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cersei POV, Character Death Fix, Episode AU: s08e05 The Bells, J/B aren’t in this but they are living rent free in Cersei’s head, Mythology - Freeform, Unreliable Narrator, r/jaimebrienne, rated D for delusional Cersei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:53:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26603263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dame_Lazarus/pseuds/Dame_Lazarus
Summary: Both her kings are dead and she is no longer anyone’s mother. Poison is a woman’s weapon. She is not just a woman, anymore. She is a ruler, and she will find her death on the battlefield too, if it comes to it.
Relationships: Cersei Lannister & Jaime Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: To arms! To arms! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775347
Comments: 26
Kudos: 30
Collections: Jaime and Brienne Subreddit Fan Creation Challenges





	I Will Not Yield

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the final installment of my myths series for the r/jaimebrienne challenge from over the summer. We have a new challenge on already (prompt: amnesia) so come and join us!
> 
> You don't necessarily have to have read the first two fics in this series, but it helps (particularly the first one.) 
> 
> Myth info at the end.

The morning the army appears on the horizon is the first noisy one in the Red Keep in ages. _Your grace! Can I have a word? What else would you have me do? Shall I ready the forces?_

The yelling; the pacing; the stamping of feet; the clanging of swords. Mornings are hard enough, as Queen. The weight of her duty has left her waking with headaches and a sensitivity to too much noise before the noontime meal. Now there is all this clamor. She can scarcely think. 

Normally she has no trouble getting the silence she needs. The cowards and idiots at Court have run or been run off, and Cersei has ruled in solitude for months now. When Robert and her sons were kings, the hallways swelled with simpering nobles hoping for a favor and terrible people kept on because it was politically expedient. She’s stood for none of that nonsense as Queen. She has at her side only the people she can trust unquestionably: her loyal Hand, her strongest guard, her most attentive handmaidens. She also has Euron Greyjoy, who she can at least trust to think mostly with his cock, like all men. 

Most of all, she has herself—her true self, not some pretty girl in silk playing the part of a doting wife or a blushing maiden. She has every inch of her skin at her disposal and she lives in it proudly. After noon, with a glass of wine.

The Dragon Queen’s forces swarm the lands outside the city like a blanket of ants after a feast. There’s only fetid scraps out there now. Robb Stark’s wars and the Targaryen girl’s dragons have ravaged what was worth taking. A shame. They’ll have to get their grain from Essos once this is all over, until she can find someone suitable to oversee their most fruitful lands.

There’s a pounding at the door, so very like the pounding in her head. Harry bloody Strickland again. “Your grace, a word.” He wants to discuss strategy. _Fight the army coming to seize my crown._ Is it really so terribly complicated? The Golden Company couldn’t provide elephants; they couldn’t even provide a competent commander. They took forever getting all the forces here from Tarth, too. The last of them only arrived last night, with the army hours away!

She dismisses him and turns back to the window, taking a sip of her wine. _Must I do everything myself?_ This is why monarchs have a master of war. She should have thought of that, but no one suitable appeared before the war did. 

Moons ago, when she first took the throne, she thought she might rely on Jaime for that role. He had taken Riverrun back for them with little trouble. Highgarden, too. Then there was that embarrassing little debacle on the Gold Road. All the loot burned and half of the Lannister Army lost to the Dragon Queen. After that, he was weaker. Timid. A disgrace of a Lannister, even for him. 

She should have seen then that he was losing his grip. When Qyburn came to her with news that he’d left with the army in the night, she suspected he’d dashed off ahead on intelligence from one of his scouts, trying to prove himself to her. She’d been annoyed—he should have consulted with her before running off like a green boy.

Then weeks went by. Qyburn heard nothing of skirmishes with Dorthraki out of the city. What he had heard were rumors that he had with him a woman. The Evenstar’s daughter, some said. Brienne of Tarth. Last Cersei had heard, the pitiful creature had been serving the Starks. Perhaps Jaime had found a way to use her obvious affection for him to their advantage. _That_ would be a victory worthy of a Lannister.

She sent the girl a warning in the North anyway. It was too good to resist.

There’s been no credible news since. Absurd stories came her way. Others to the North. Dragons breathing ice against dragons breathing fire. A lady knight riding at the front of the Lannister column who spent her nights in the Lord Commander’s tent. Some even said that they were wed.

(Preposterous, all of it. Jaime vowed to never wed. The Others are just a fairy story to scare children. Cersei doesn’t even wholly believe the tale of the Targaryen girl’s dragons, truth be told. Jaime just didn’t want to admit to losing to a band of savages.)

The only thing that made sense were tales of wounded Lannister soldiers, returning to their homes in the West. The word from them was that the Lannister Army was returning to the south. To the capital, she presumes. Jaime hasn’t responded to any of her messages. They must not have reached him. _Bloody armies. What use is an army if it’s impossible to reach them when there’s a war on?_

The Keep shakes. Her carafe of wine tumbles to the floor and shatters. The red liquid runs in rivulets between the stones. She steps quickly onto the carpet to avoid it staining her skirts.

Overhead, almost otherworldly: a screeching roar.

Cersei races to the window, but she sees nothing. _Filthy tricks, all._

“You grace!” Her handmaiden has burst into the room without knocking.

“Have you forgotten your manners?” she asks. Even Jaime knocks. Her bodyguard is barely on alert. Ser Robert should have struck that girl dead. 

The dark-haired girl cowers. “I apologize, your grace. I only meant to fetch you. The castle is under siege. Maester Qyburn—“

“Maester Qyburn can come see me himself. _You_ will bring me a fresh carafe of wine.” 

“Y-yes, of course, your grace,” she stammers, leaving quickly from the door.

The girl doesn’t return. The building shakes even more while Cersei waits. Bits of stone trickle from the ceiling onto her daybed. 

_I have to do everything myself_ , she fumes. 

Cersei throws open the door to the empty hallway. She calls for her maid, but all that answers her is that awful roaring sound. It’s supposed to sound like dragons, she presumes, but it’s a poor approximation. They’re trying to convince her to surrender with theatrics. It will take more than a few screeches and rumbles.

“Where is Qyburn when I need him?” She says this to Ser Robert, who just stands there. “Where is everyone when I need them?”

A fine dusting of debris floats down to coat Ser Robert’s armor. He doesn’t flinch.

Cersei sighs. “Come, you useless sack of meat,” she beckons, walking briskly away. Ser Robert lumbers heavily behind her as she exits her tower. She travels down the spiral stone stairs, past vacant floor after vacant floor to the desolate courtyard on the ground floor. Just this morning she was beset by courtiers and their urgency. Now they all have fled. How absolutely disappointing. _When this is over,_ she thinks, frantically, _when this is over, they will answer for their cowardice._

She’s walking to Qyburn’s grandmaester quarters—she kept the Tower of the Hand, the truest seat of power, for herself—when the darkness looms from overhead. It consumes the entire courtyard, plus the surrounding towers and the gardens beyond. 

She looks up. In the air, soaring, circling the Keep: a creature so fearsome it can only be one of legend. The dragon roars, fire bursting forth and blackening the uppermost tips of the highest points of the castle. Cersei feels her disbelief drain from her, leaving her cold and trembling. 

For a few moments, she is unable to move. Like her ancestors before her, the Kings of the Rock, she is at the mercy of a Targaryen. 

As the darkness fades, the decision comes to her, coursing through her veins like an aged Dornish red. _I am no King of the bloody Rock. I am Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. And I will not yield to be placed under another’s rule again._

She changes course. Instead of to Qyburn’s quarters, her feet lead her and Ser Robert, clanging along, to the armory. 

A lifetime ago, she had faced the same: usurpers come to take away her throne. Then she had been a queen in name only, the mother to a king out on the battlefield and to a future king on her lap. She had poison in her hand; she wasn’t going to let them take her alive. Now both her kings are dead and she is no longer anyone’s mother. Poison is a woman’s weapon. She is not just a woman, anymore. She is a ruler, and she will find her death on the battlefield too, if it comes to it.

The armory’s heavy wooden door is locked. “Open it,” she instructs Ser Robert. He throws himself into the door by the shoulder, over, and over, and over, and over, until it splinters. 

Cersei lifts her skirt and steps over the pieces into the dark building. She’s disappointed that there isn’t much here. Stacks of wooden shields line one wall. Along the other, she sees a mostly empty rack of swords. _I should have armed myself when I could demand the finest King’s Landing had to offer._

She takes a medium-sized blade by the handle. It glints the brightest of all in the armory’s dim light. The end is sharp; she taps her finger at the point and is pleasantly surprised to feel it draw blood.

“This will do,” she tells Ser Robert. He stands guard stoically in the doorway.

Once a mere woman, a pawn of men, now she is a warrior. Men have defiled and disappointed her; nothing can hurt her now that she has a sword at last. _Are the rumors about you and that wretched swordwench true? Would this excite you, brother? Me with a sword in my hand?_ Likely not. Likely Jaime is dead, rotting on the battlefield, never to be excited by her again. It has always been Jaime to swing the sword for her. It should’ve been her all along.

On her path back to her tower, the dragon looms in the sky above her. Far off, there is more roaring, more screeching. More smoke and fire. _Fire and blood_ , Cersei remembers. She laughs aloud, a frenzied spray of giggles. The rumors said she had three dragons. She grips the pommel of the blade she carries tighter. It’s heavier than it looks. 

Another of her maids greets her at the foot of the tower’s staircase. Her brown eyes are wild, her wheat-colored braids askew on the crown of her head. 

“Your Grace!” she exclaims. “We’ve been so worried.”

Cersei raises her sword and slices her blade across the girl’s freckled throat. It feels like cutting into an undercooked piece of mutton. “Liar,” she says, as the girl’s hands scrabble at the jagged wound. Blood spurts through her delicate fingers. She staggers back to the stairs, leaning against the wall, bleeding all over everything. 

Cersei and Ser Robert step around the gurgling girl. Her arm is already sore from the single strike. _It’s harder than it looks._

Four floors up, a call rings out. Her name, her titles, echoing up the high ceilings through the open stairwell. She looks down: running towards them is her errant maester, his black robes loose and dusty around his gaunt shoulders and his wrinkly bald head glistening with sweat.

“Your grace!” He stops, panting, gesturing for her to join him. She descends, slowly, regally. Skirts in one hand and bloodied sword in the other. Behind her, she can hear Ser Robert clambering down in her wake. 

“Come,” Qyburn pleads. “We still have time. There are tunnels under the castle. They will lead us out of the city.”

Cersei stands before him. Why did she put so much faith in a man with jowls? “I will not flee from my enemies like a coward. I will die a queen. The rightful queen.”

He looks at her sword instead up at her eyes. “Of course, of course. You will not have to give up your crown, your grace. We will regroup to the East. Return to take back what’s ours.”

“Mine,” she reminds him, as she raises her sword with both hands and plunges it into his belly. “Mine.”

Qyburn cries out when she re-grips the blade and wrenches it free. He stumbles forward, grasping fistfuls of her skirt to hold himself up. The black fabric drinks up the blood as readily as the blade did. 

She tries to pry his fingers away. He fights back, pulling tighter, yanking her forward as she tries to break free. 

Ser Robert bends down and lifts her Hand, groaning, by the scruff of his neck. His blood drips to the stone. One moment, he’s suspended: pat, pat, pat. The next: Qyburn’s body flies across the room, hurtled into the wall by Ser Robert. He lands with a crack. Quick, wet, and satisfying.

Cersei and Ser Robert turn back to the stairs and resume their climb. 

She’s been distracted. The building is still shaking. The dragons are closer, and there is a smell of smoke in the air. Harrenhal was once a noble stone castle until some Targaryen dragon or other melted it into the ugly cursed heap it is today. A pity. The Red Keep was always a dazzling sight. At least she will be the last ruler to use it. _Mine._

In her chambers, where she began her day, she walks past the window and out onto the terrace. Under her feet is the map of her kingdom she had painted. She walks the line from the circle denoting her capital through the Crownlands, to the Riverlands, to the Mountains of the Moon. She doesn’t get farther than that before the Targaryen girl approaches. 

She sits on the back of her great big black dragon like it’s a throne. Her white-blonde hair streams behind her in the wind, held in place with an array of braids, a child’s play-acting version of a crown. She wears black, too. The dragon lands on the edge of the terrace, snorting little tendrils of smoke her way.

Cersei looks the Dragon Queen in the eye. She smiles. 

Ser Robert is a good guard, even in the end. He steps between his Queen and the dragon, his massive blade held aloft. He swings at the creature and is rewarded with flames, white-hot and burning red, cloaking him from head to foot. 

He doesn’t move. The dragon knocks him with his nose off the edge of the tower, still on fire. Cersei doesn’t move to see him tumble through the air. He doesn’t make a sound as he falls.

“You have lost,” Daenerys Targaryen calls out. “My armies have taken the city. My dragons have burned your fleet. Surrender now and I might be compelled to let you keep your life.”

In response, Cersei grips her sword in both hands. She raises it in the air. 

She runs. 

The dragon opens its jaws. The flames that wind around her are heavier than the Lannister maiden’s cloak she last wore when first became Queen. She couldn’t wait to get it off her and get the thing done. She wasn’t even a maiden, in truth.

 _You’ll answer to me soon, brother_ ; she thinks as she burns. _We will both die serving the same god now. You just got a head start._

They will be together, in death. She is sure of it. It is as it was meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> In Greek mythology, there was a noble warrior named Caeneus who was said to be invulnerable to weapons. Caeneus was born a woman, the noble maiden Caenis, who after being raped by the god Poseidon, asked to be made into a man so that she could never be so harmed again. Eventually, Caeneus was defeated by mythical creatures (centaurs) who killed him not with weapons but by piling fir trees on him until he fell directly into the underworld.


End file.
